Fated Skates

Prologue

I was on my hands and knees on the ice again, with the entire world watching.

Get up, get up, get up, get up!

The way the music kept echoing around the auditorium felt like an insult. I was in agony, but the lark in the song was still

joyfully soaring toward the clouds. It struck me how huge the disconnect was between my body and the performance part of my

brain, because in my head I was still dutifully skating my choreography. The sweeping violin meant that I was supposed to

be twisting in midair right now . . . then landing perfectly on one blade . . . into a step sequence . . . preparing for a triple lutz . . .

Get up.

I already had, twice.

I could hear murmurs from the crowd starting, and the vibe in the Olympic auditorium shifting. I was used to feeling embraced

by the collective energy of audiences. Whatever was raining down on me now—disappointment? disbelief? anger?—was keeping me

anchored to the ice.

It’s over, they told me.

Get up, the voice in my head demanded.

Eventually, I did.

I blinked back the tears pooling in my eyes, ignored the flames shooting up my leg, and tried to inhabit the final, floaty

moments of the song. I’d never agreed with my coach that The Lark Ascending sounded wistful. To me, it was a mournful piece of music, and as I stretched my hand over my head on the last note, I might

as well have been waving a white flag of surrender.

There was a pause of pin-drop silence after the music faded, while the audience collectively decided how to respond to their

favorite Olympic hopeful crashing out before their eyes.

It didn’t matter if they gave me thunderous applause or golf claps, I couldn’t hear it. I was sobbing, hiding my face in my

hands as I skated off the ice.

I kept my eyes down and refused to look at the camera poised behind the source of all my pain. Carol stood in the middle of

the rink door, practically blocking me from leaving the ice, because she was about to play her part. To everyone watching,

she was my concerned coach, taking me into her arms and whispering encouragement in my ear.

But what she’d actually said, raising her hand to cover her mouth so no lip-readers could catch it, was, Why the hell did you give up?

The resulting dagger to my chest hurt almost as badly as the pain radiating from my ankle.

I pushed past her and had no choice but to move on to Tricia. I was sure this hug looked more convincing, because she’d spent

her life calibrating how she appeared.

Neither embrace comforted me in any way.

I put on my guards and walked to the postperformance waiting area called the kiss and cry with the two of them following behind me.

We sat down and a camera pushed in close, forcing me to find other places to look, like down at my nails and up at the ceiling beams. I tried to force myself to stop crying, because I could already see the headlines beneath the close-ups of me.

Tricia handed me a tissue and motioned that I needed to wipe my face because mascara was running down my cheeks.

For the first time in my life, I didn’t rush to follow her instruction.

I was devastated, and the two women whose opinions had formed the foundation of my skating career couldn’t even muster half-hearted

support for me.

So I decided to let the world see what being broken looked like.

I finally raised my watery eyes and stared directly into the camera.